January

Staffing

Rachel Burnell to go on secondment to library secretariat from 14 February to 15 April to act as Sami

Michael Wallace on leave with Emma Nelms acting (50%) Manager, Law Library from 24 January to 11 February 2022

Desk

Library desk closed in alignment with HiQ and QUT encouragement to WFH 24 January to 4 February. Desk has returned to open but while there a few clients, it is currently still quiet. Some students like to use the moot courts & the individual study rooms. A few new students spotted checking out the library, clutching their campus map.

Teaching and Learning

Graduate School Skill Labs:  Working closely with Lauren(SSG) and Ashley (Program Administrator) to develop a new scaffolded workshop program for MBAs and EMBAS including the Canberra Defence Forces cohort.    This new structure of this program means the library involvement with the Grad School is much increased.  Already 2 out of 3 of the Skills Lab sessions have been delivered by Janet – around 50 enrol and about 30 attend (classes are recorded).   Students giving good feedback in the class. Library offers 3 skills labs are on Business Research, Referencing & Endnote. Business Research class uses a course guide for teaching – good feedback from students

Quentin continues to offer the Legal Research sessions and sessions on how to Reference with AGLC4 workshops for u/g and coursework students in the first weeks of the semester (advertised by UC via units’ Bb sites) and organised LLB346 students’ registration for online access to de Groot’s : Wills, Probate and Administration Practice

Mandy Brown from SSG is working with Heather & Stephen to develop introductory legal research and referencing classes to be delivered in March embedded within context of a legal assignment & research framework

Stephen is updating  Law Course reserve for Sem 1 / 2022 – checking reading lists, ordering new editions of texts / eBooks. Checking eBook numbers with regard to class sizes and has extended this to Business units by checking reading lists for core Business units / adding to ALMA lists as well as coordinating school visits to the law library for 2022 / revising schools workshop

LAs have been heavily involved in updating subject guides (e.g. old books, broken links) and development of new unit guides in Law & Business for example Katerina has created a couple for HR

Tom Mullins has volunteered to teach the AusAid students (9 February) – an introduction to researching & referencing. Only 4 students but a great group varying from 1 Phd – 2 Masters & 1 UG

Emma has also taken up service manager role of Library Workshops (generic program) following departure of Megan Brodribb and working on reworking of Information Literacy Framework together with Peter, Gabrielle & Stephanie. Thanks to team of Tom, Thu, Stephanie, Eileen, Danielle & Zach have updated resources and run two hour training (recorded). If you’re teaching into the generic programme, please provide your comments, feedback & suggestions on to the padlet: https://padlet.com/e_nelms/yg6cbpr0jc8hq4qs

Collection Management

Quentin has completed the decision-making part of the Deselection/Downsizing the Law Primary and other Law Library Collections’ project
Background: The QUT Library management has requested me to undertake a project of downsizing the Law Primary Collection currently situated on level 6 of the Law Library. The purpose of the downsizing is to free the floor space to accommodate additional seating for the students in the Law Library.

Research Support

Quentin carried out metrics consultations for ARC grant applicants along with research consultations. She has been invited to  the School of Law Planning Day (9 February)

Mathew attending the 2022 Behavioural Economics, Science and Technology conference at QUT (led by Uwe Dulleck & Rebecca Russell-Bennett)  as a representative of the FBL Liaison Team (10 February)

Mathew  and Janet are working with Philippa to deliver a Love Data week session on Financial Datasets as a source of secondary data. Our most recent is Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) datasets
Comparative rankings of climate change mitigation and sustainable water management by companies and cities, from Carbon Disclosure Project.

Weekly newsletters to Faculty of Business & Law researchers & staff sent out: “Thank you so much Emma. As always, I love these emails and I always try to make my way through and look for the salient pieces for me and my cohorts of students.” (Tony Peloso – academic in Grad School of Business) – incorporates relevant headlines from Times Higher Ed, Australian Policy Online,  Financial Times, new databases (Overton & Carbon Disclosure Project), Love Data Week & Research Skills sessions, London School of Economics Impact blog feed & various articles & resources (this week Make ClickView your new bestie for off-air broadcast videos  – FT: Pedigree chums? Dogs in the office prove divisive – FT: Employers beware: hybrid work weakens loyalty)

Fortnightly emails to Entrepreneurship group at request of Rowena Barrett (with advice on sources) sent by Emma with assistance from Thu: https://libguides.library.qut.edu.au/entrepreneurship

February – March

Law Library Helpdesk

We are continuing to implement the changes to the layout of the Helpdesk discussed in the February report, which have been developed in consultation with affected staff (library advisers) and their HSR (Kristiana Darling) and with input and advice from our HSE partners.  The changes currently being implemented are designed to facilitate social distancing while maintaining or improving our ability to work effectively with clients – and hopefully improving the user experience for both staff and students. While there is work still to be done (e.g. installing an additional display to better facilitate screen sharing with students) some changes have already been made.  These include replacing bollards and barrier tape for social distancing with more attractive and effective plants:

Jessup Moot Team

In February QUT competed in the Philip C. Jessup Moot Court Competition, one of the oldest and most prestigious moot competitions, with around 500 teams competing from around the world.   In 2022 the Australian rounds, with 18 teams competing, were held online.  The QUT team put on an extremely good performance, losing narrowly to UNSW (who went on to win the overall round) in the quarter finals.  Overall this was the best performance by a QUT team in many years, and they are to be congratulated on the hard work they put in over many months in preparation for the competition.  Law Library staff where specifically thanked in the Faculty of Business and Law newsletter for their support for the team and we continue to support other moot teams who are still competing this year.

April – May

Law Library Helpdesk

A total of 320 enquiries were handled by our library advisers at the Helpdesk in May.  Of these 139 (43%) were “learning and study” enquiries and 84 of them, or 60%, were substantial enquiries lasting more than 5 minutes.

Law library advisers also continued to deliver Library chat on weekends and public holidays during May, as they have been this semester.  They dealt with 55  live chats during May, covering the full range of potential enquiries from students across QUT.

This feedback that Katarina received from a school student is a nice example of the positive impact we make for our clients:

Schools Program

Mabel Park SHS Workhop

Tom Mullins delivered a “Researching to Save Your Life” workshop for 25 Year 10 students from Mable Park State High School on Friday 10 May with support from Brendan Sinnamon.  The students were participating in a day long STEM program coordinated by Associate Professor Paige Little from the Faculty of Engineering.  The program supports students from backgrounds of socio-economic challenge and cultural diversity, to attend QUT campus and undertake one-on-one mentorship on STEM projects.

Kelvin Grove State College

• Nicole Clark, Sarah Howard and Michael Wallace met with Kelvin Grove SC senior leadership and the KGSC library team on Thursday 5 May to update KGSC on 24/7 QUT Library opening and also with the intention of renewing our previously close relationship with the school.  Students from the college are regular users of our Library spaces so we wanted to make them aware of the changes to opening hours and methods of entry after 8pm at KG Library.
• Following the meeting KGSC invited us to present to their senior school students (years 10 to 12) and Michael Wallace presented to the Year 10 and 11 assemblies at the end of May (you can view the presentation, which was very brief, here: Library Presentation KGSC

Faculty of Business and Law Liaison

Emma Nelms (AMPR, Management, Graduate School of Business)

• Metric reports completed by team for Judy Mathews, Kate Letheren, Frank Mathmann, Boon Lee and Craig Furneaux in Business
• Regular research and referencing classes continue for Public Sector Management Program

Mathew Fletcher (Economics and Finance)

• Mathew received some nice feedback from BSB108 co-ordinator, Louisa Coglan, on embedding information literacy within weekly tutorial activities:
  have also cc in Mathew as I think he may be a little proud that he has had a huge influence on how we are training students up in terms of research skills!! Enjoy Mathew – I am dedicating Task 3 to you – so I hope you like it .
• Met with Behavioural Economics, Science & Technology director & Communications Co-Ordinator to provide an overview of news and current affairs databases for BEST Centre media monitoring and government submissions.

Law Library

IDAHOBIT

Tom Mullins organized a morning tea for Library staff at GP Library on 17 May to celebrate IDAHOBIT, the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia & Transphobia.  IDAHOBIT celebrates LGBTQIA+ people globally, and raises awareness for the work still needed to combat discrimination and dontations help develop programs that support LGBTIAQ+ youth in Australia.

CAUL Law Library Review Project

Michael Wallace is representing QUT Library on the CAUL Law Content Review Project, a collaborative project to achieve better outcomes for CAUL Members subscribing to law content resources.  Quentin Pope attended the first meeting in April and Michael attended two meetings in May.  It is hoped that this project, under the leadership of CAUL, will result in improved license conditions more aligned with the needs of academic libraries.

Health, Safety and Environment

Study Rooms and Ventilation

• Geoff Woods (Manager, Engineering Services, FM) attended the Law Library staff meeting on 10 May and spoke to the team about ventilation in the Law Library.  Geoff provided information about air quality monitoring and discussed how the level of CO2 (a proxy for potential virus levels in the air) is measured and the impact of occupancy on CO2 levels.
• Law Library staff asked about some of the smaller meeting rooms, in which students occasionally exceed the maximum recommended occupancy.  This could mean that recommended upper limits are exceed in the room or in adjacent rooms that have connected air supply.  Geoff advised that some rooms are not able to be monitored or controlled individually.
• At a later meeting of Library Advisers on 26 May it was agreed that it would be helpful to undertake some observation of the usage of the the rooms (C501, C513, C514, C525, C526 and C527).  The results of the observation will be available at the end of June when we have enough data to make an assessment.

Workplace Health and Safety Inspector Visit

• On Thursday 19 May an inspector from the Office of Industrial Relations visited the Law Library and met with Nick Ryan (Director, Health Safety and Environment at QUT) and Kristiana Darling (Health and Safety Representative for the Law Library).  The inspector was happy with the modifications to the Helpdesk that have been made in consultation with Law Library staff with the aim of reducing COVID risks following our return to face to face service at the desk.

Other

• Michael Wallace attended Mental Health First Aid Training (four sessions of three hours each at Kelvin Grove) in May and subsequently successfully completed the assessment.

June

Law Library

Staffing

Following an EOI process, Helen Davies was appointed to backfill Janet Baker while Janet is on leave from 1 July to 1 November 2022.

Tom Mullins to be acting Education Liaison Librarian at Kelvin Grove, job sharing with Stephanie Jacobs from 1 July to 9 September 2022.  Kristiana Darling, whose current two day per week contract ends on 30 June 2022, has been appointed to backfill Tom during this time.

Library Schools Program

Sarah Howard and Michael Wallace visited Kelvin Grove State College on 13 June to speak to the KGSC senior school leadership team about the Schools Program and other services available to school students and teachers from the Library.

Following the presentations to Years 10 and 11 in late May (see May’s report), Michael Wallace gave another presentation about accessing QUT libraries and the services available to the Year 12 students at KGSC on 2 June.  Since those two presentations some twenty-one Year 12 KGSC Engineering students and four other KGSC students have taken out community memberships.

The Schools Program page for Teachers was updated on 15 June, adding an email contact for teachers wishing to request a workshop.  This is a temporary fix (hopefully) while we investigate a recurrent problem whereby users are sometimes presented with an error message when they try to access the workshop request form.  Thanks to Craig O’Neil for his help with updating the page.

On 20 June  Michael Wallace and Sarah Howard met with Lukas Starling from Widening Participation to discuss Library support for a Year 11 to 12 Academic Preparation Program currently under development.

Liaison Service

In early June, Emma Nelms and Janet Baker held the first Strategic Grants session in the Law Library.  These are early morning workshops to show members of the community (charities or those seeking funding) how to use the Foundation Directory Online database.  QUT is the only place in Australia that hosts access to this resource of funding information about Grantmakers, how much they fund and in what areas.

On 7 June Emma and Lyndelle Gunton gave a presentation to the Capacity Developing workshop for Indigenous HDR students in Carumba Institute on the role of Liaison Librarians & the support available to them.  Emma also attended the QUT Indigenous Australian Research Strategy launch.  QUT’s new work with indigenous organisations has been highly commended.

Emma has also been working on the Information Literacy Review with Peter, Stephanie J & Gabrielle and attended the Digital Platform Work symposium as part of her role as liaison to the Centre for Decent Work & Industry.

Mathew Fletcher has been invited to present results of the Altmetrics impact report to the Management and Communications Team, Behavioural Economics, Science & Technology Centrein mid-July.

CIESJ Team Update

Alice, Ellen, Sandra and Gillian gave a fabulous presentation regarding the CIESJ Faculty and all the wonderful work they are doing as a new Liaison Team at the All Staff Update on June 2. You can find their slides HERE.

July

Achievements

Nominated by Law Library colleagues, Emma and Thu were awarded Law Library Peer Recognition Awards at the end of Semester 1 in appreciation of their significant contribution to the Law Library’s values and goals.

Law Print Collection Usage

Stephen Booth ran some reports on the usage of the Law Library print collection to the end of July and found the following interesting stats:

The Law Library Course Reserve Collection is used between 10 and 15 times more than Course Reserve at GP and KG:

Law also dominates the most used individual book titles (print and electronic) across the Library:

Finally, although not strictly collection related, the Case Law Research guide continues to be far and away the most used libguide:

Celebrations – End of Semester 1 Lunch

On 19 July a number of us enjoyed lunch at Bourbon Street to celebrate the end of Semester 1.

Open Day – Sunday 31 July

Quentin Pope, Kristiana Darling and Helen McMahon were part of the QUT Open Day team, fielding questions and helping out with tours in the Law Library.  Stephen Booth, who was on duty at the Helpdesk also responded to questions from visitors and spoke about the services available to students, while Thu Hoang took over delivery of the chat service from the Law Library as it was not possible to deliver it from the desk as usual.  The organizers of Open Day gave great feedback on the program overall and our thanks go to all the staff involved in ensuring a successful Open Day.

Liaison Librarian Update

Community Grant Maker Tutorial was held at Law Library for first time.  This is an early morning class to demonstrate the Foundation Directory of philanthropic grant organisations to members of the community.

Emma judged the 3MT Business & Law competition and taught with SSG the Build your Business Research Skills for commencing Business coursework students

Mathew presented results of the Altmetrics impact report to Behavioural Economics, Science & Technology Centre management and Comms team (Trish Galliford & Sam Ong) on 14 July.

Sustainability

On 12 July Helen Davies presented an overview of the Green Impact Program to the Library and invited staff to participate by engaging with the fortnightly challenges.  The first challenge set was for staff to turn computers off at the end of the week and for staff to weed their cloud storage.

Wellness

Barry (from GP Library), Heather, Thu, Mathew, Katarina, Kristiana, Rachel and Thu have joined forces to participate in the 15-minute challenge which runs for 6 weeks starting from Monday 8 August.  This is a great initiative to encourage us all to be active every day and the perfect reason to get out and enjoy the beautiful campus surroundings.

August

Schools Program

Michael Wallace attended a workshop for the Faculty of Business and Law facilitated by Simone Long from the STEM for Schools program as part of a Uni-wide review of high school engagement activity. The invitation was extended to the Law Library by the Faculty given our long history of collaboration with the School of Law on high school engagement.  The review is expected to make its recommendations in the coming weeks. 

A small group of staff is continuing to work on reviewing and updating Schools program materials on SharePoint.  The new structure will be finalized by the end of August and implemented shortly thereafter.

Law Library Facilities

Kristiana discovered that the duress alarms weren’t working when tested on the Ekka Show Holiday.  This was reported to Security and a technician attended the library on 15 and 16 August.  [add something more about testing]

Staffing

Library Adviser recruitment

The Law Library welcomed three fieldwork students in August: Linda, Wendy and Kia. Each spent time with different members of the team and shadowed at the Helpdesk.

Wellness

We are nearing the end of the six-week’ ’15 Minute Challenge and members of ‘The Leftovers’ have enjoyed the challenge and found that they have made more time to get in a little bit of exercise each day.  A positive result!

September

MLS (Law Library) News

Michael attended a Lego as Serious Play workshop at the end of September. Using Lego as a tool during group work engages various parts of the brain and facilitates the use of different thought processes. Models can be used as metaphors to assist with strategy development and problem solving. 

Staffing

Congratulations to Emma Nelms on her appointment to backfill for Jen Thomas as Manager, Library Services (Gardens Point) from 19 September to 2 December .  We wish you well in your new role Emma.  Sally Kleine has been appointed as Liaison Librarian to backfill for Emma and we look forward to working with Sally again over the next couple of months.

We have also welcomed Stephanie Paddick to the Law Library Team.  Stephanie has joined the Law Library as Library Adviser. [ANY BACKGROUND INFO TO ADD ON STEPHANIE??]

Congratulations also to Tom Mullins who has been appointed to backfill as Liaison Librarian (CIESJ) from 17 October – 25 November for three days a week.

Library Adviser News

We recently had some discussion regarding how to manage student expectations regarding the R&R service we provide, and how to ensure a consistent and equitable service.  It was agreed that: rather than confirming if a reference is correct or not, the LA could encourage the student to compare the elements of their reference to the examples/ templates provided in Cite|Write and AGLC.  

Liaison Librarian News

Mathew Fletcher gave a presentation to Library staff at the online Library Staff Update meeting on 4 October highlighting the activities and achievements of the Business and Law Faculty Liaison Team during 2022. You can find his presentation here.

October

Katarina Borcherdt became a CAUL Digital Dexterity Champion (sharing the role with Jacque Quinn). She also joined the Australian Law Librarians’ Association National Finding Law Online (FLO) Project Team as one of the Jurisdictional Content Developers for Qld. The FLO project involves ALLA members working together to update and expand the Finding Law Online course through the development of a new set of online learning modules.

November – December

MLS (Law Library) News

Hosted Cheri, at Law Library (Fieldwork student) on 28 November

Hosted Library Liaison Poster Session on 12 December.

Staffing

On Thursday 1 December we held a morning tea to farewell Janet Baker who has been a valued member of the Law Library as Liaison Librarian since August 2021.   In this time, she has forged strong relationships with academics in the School of Accountancy and the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Non-Profit Studies. Janet started at QUT Library as a reference librarian and went on to fill a variety of roles including being Research Impact Librarian (the first in that role), Research Support Librarian, ERA Officer and of course liaison librarian.  In each of these roles Janet has made a positive difference for QUT academics, researchers and students. Academics and professional staff gathered to express their thanks for her work and to wish her all the best in her retirement.

We welcomed Nick Morgan to the Law Library at the end of November.  Nick joins the Law Library team as a full-time Library Adviser, backfilling Tom Mullins until 24 June 2023, having previously worked as a Library Adviser at Kelvin Grove Library and as Brand Centre Curator in the QUT Marketing and Communications team.

Congratulations to Tom Mullins on his appointment as Liaison Librarian within the Accountancy and Graduate School of Business team, Law Library.

Library Adviser News

Thu and Stephanie have been busy identifying links to online commentaries to update in Primo to make it easier for users to find these commentaries. The work will result in an updated Secondary Legal Sources guide linking to commentary sources in Primo.

Liaison Librarian News

Sally recently took on the role of member of the Business and Law judging panel for the SAGE HDR Publications Prize 2022.  There were over 80 strong entries for the judging panels to choose from.

The award ceremony was held on 7th December 2022 at Kelvin Grove Library.  Congratulations to the winner in the Faculty of Business and Law category, Ranjita Islam, from the School of Management.  The submission by Rachel Horne, School of Law, received a commendation.  Photos below show the recipients being presented with their awards by Professor Ginny Barbour.

Ranjita Islam and Rachel Horne (online) with Professor Ginny Barbour.

Sally provided some positive feedback that she had received:

• “Thanks so much Sal, I really appreciate your advice.”- Academic, re: searching Factiva
• “Thank you so much – that is amazing, and I really appreciate the supporting information.” – Chancellery Division, in relation to work completed by Steph P
• “Thanks so much for all of this and for the extra support. I will ensure that the insights you share with me are cascaded to my HDR students so that it has a wider impact.” – Academic, metrics and grants support
• “Thanks for the tip, I did not know about this lovely feature…I learnt something new!!!” – HDR student
• “Thank you for the follow-up email. It was helpful to meet you via zoom and got some insights again about the search strategies.” – HDR Student
• “Thank you for your valuable email.” – HDR Student

End of Semester Lunch

.

We enjoyed a lunch at Jumbo Thai to celebrate the end of Semester